THE GRATIOT LEAGUE SQUARE

CHARLES GRATIOT'S LAND GRANT IS THE FIRST BEGINNINGS OF
SETTLEMENT IN THE DOGTOWN NEIGHBORHOOD

By Bob Corbett
August 2000

Charles Gratiot is the figure we must look to for the first beginnings of settlement in the Dogtown area. All settlement and development of our neighborhood stem from the energy and effort of Charles Gratiot.

He was born in 1752 in Lausanne, Switzerland, but his ancestors had come from La Rochelle, France. He was educated in England and after arriving in St. Louis also added Spanish to his linguistic abilities. These languages aided him in succeeding in business and politics. Given this background and the French nature of early St. Louis, McCune Gill points out that
his name was most likely pronounced "Sch R L Grass ioh" (Gill, 266).

Gratiot distinguished himself in the American Revolution, and in 1780 came to St. Louis at the age of 28. "He bought half a block of ground along the North side of Chestnut Street from First to Second Street with a stone house located thereon. He then built a large stone store house and office building on the lot."

Charles Gratiot's City Home at Chestnut and 2nd St.

Photo taken from Stevens, 1909.

The next year he married Victoria Chouteau, daughter of the famous Madam Marie Therese Chouteau one of the founders of St. Louis. His close association
with the Chouteau family lasted his life time and aided him in both business and politics, and certain with his huge and famous land grant that so affects Dogtown.

It's rather strange for us to remember that this was Spanish land until nearly the very moment of the Louisiana Purchase. There is a tendency to think that since the founders of St. Louis were French from New Orleans, and that the Louisiana Purchase was from France, that the Louisiana Territory was French. It was and wasn't. Spain ceded Louisiana to France several years prior to the Louisiana Purchase, but France never actually took back governing power. Thus all the way to the end it was the Spanish who ran and administered Louisiana and thus early St. Louis.

The young Charles Gratiot

Photo taken from Stevens, 1909.

Thus it was to the Spanish authorities which Charles Gratiot went in 1785 to ask for a land grant outside of St. Louis where he could commence farming and "to cultivate wheat, hemp, corn, tobacco, etc., etc." (Gill, 268.) This initial land grant was given by Don Francois de Cruzat, Lieutenant Colonel of the region and later
finalized in finally confirmed by Governor Gayoso de Lemos in 1798.

After the Louisiana Purchase the United States challenged and rejected many Spanish land grants especially those made in the 1790s. However, Gratiot's position and political clout were quite secure and his grant was accepted by the United States in 1808.

To review the key movements of this grant:

1785 Charles Gratiot appeals for the Gratiot League Square from
Don Francois de Cruzat, Lieutenant Colonel and it is granted.

1798 the grant is legally formalized by the Spanish Governor Gayoso de
Lemos,

1804 the United States purchases the Louisiana Territory (including St.
Louis) from the French who owned it but weren't administering it.

1808 the United States affirms and officially records Charles Gratiot's
huge land grant.

THE GRATIOT LEAGUE SQUARE: A MASSIVE PART OF CENTRAL WESTERN ST. LOUIS.

It is mind-boggling to sit down and think today of just what Charles Gratiot was given. He received nearly a full league square. A league is just about 3 miles.

Thus a perfect league square would be a piece of land where each of the four
sides was three miles. However in the final grant his "league square" was a bit
short on the north-south line and a full league on the east-west line, so it's a bit
of a rectangle rather than a square. The rough borders in today's St. Louis are:

The McCausland Side. The red line is along McCausland.
The actual end of Gratiot's land is just a bit west of McCausland, as is the
current border of the City of St. Louis by about 1 1/2 blocks.

Pernod marked in red.

Forest Park marked in red.

The Kindshighway Side. The red line is along Kingshighway Blvd.

Map is taken from 1878 Pitzman map of St. Louis

Charles Gratiot had already built a house on the land in 1790 and begun his work of cultivating and developing it. This was not his main home. That remained his city home on Chestnut. This was his "country" home and he even had a few neighbors, having sold off a few parcels of land to other "gentlemen farmers." The 1790 home seems to have been improved upon a bit and looks a bit different in 1810.

The 1790 home is on the left; the 1810 on the right

Photo of 1790 house taken from Stevens, 1909.
Photo of 1810 house taken from Billon, 1888.

CHARLES GRATIOT'S HOMESTEAD

Frederick Billon describes the Gratiot country home as: "A weather board log house 1 1-2 stories high, 50 feet long, by 16 deep, on a stone foundation about 4 feet high, with a stone chimney at each end. Three doors on the east front, one to each room, with a shed over the steps to each, in place of the gallery which originally extended along the whole front of 50 feet; the rear gallery still remains, in a dilapidated condition.

"It stands on high ground overlooking the country in each direction, about three-eighths of a mile west of the King's Highway, which is the east line of the "Gratiot League Square," and 150 yards north of Pattison Avenue which leads to it.

"A deep well of water stands about 50 yards north-east of the house. A part of the stone foundations of Gratiot's old mill, are still to be seen, (1881) a short distance north of the house, on the slope of the hill which descends to the river Des Peres, and the ruins of the old stone spring-house, in a hollow about 200 yards east, as also a number of old dead apple-trees in the orchard." (Billon, p. 173.)

In the 1875 Pictorial Map of St. Louis, Camille Dry has the Gratiot house. It would be described as being just to the east of Mackland Ave. It is just below Pattison Ave., where Mackland begins its steep descent from The Hill down toward the railroad tracks. (Dry, plate 98)

Below are two photos of aerial drawings of St. Louis in 1875. First there is most of the River des Peres valley as it was at that time. I have marked the spot of
Charles Gratiot's house in red.

Map taken from Dry, plate 98

A few comments on the photo above:

This drawing is from about Kingshighway at the bottom to Tamm Ave. at the top.
It goes to about Wilson on the left (south), and Clayton Ave. on the right (north).

While it does give us a look at the two-dimensional layout of the neighborhood, we
don't get the third dimension. Recall where I-44 is now is close to the Gratiot house,
so it was on a relatively flat shelf, but on a hill overlooking the valley.

It is quite important to note that this map was made in 1875 LONG after the Gratiots,
Charles and Henry had left the region of the valley. As you see, by this time the
valley was filled with factories.

There is cluster of buildings in the upper right corner, the farthest, one white house
and two small out buildings. The three of them together would be the Billion mansion. Just down from that in the corner
and barely visible is a whitish looking place. That would have been the house of Paul Benjamin Gratiot's family, though
Paul Benjamin himself had died 20 years earlier. Below that, the house in the cluster
of trees would be the home of Dr. Charles Gratiot, a son of Paul Benjamin.

The top line of the photo is Tamm Ave. Just a bit left of center is a large cluster
of building. That is St. James Church. At the south end of Tamm, near the "plate 97"
sign, the larger of the two white buildings is the home of John O'Gorman, still standing
at 1427 Tamm, it was built around 1852 and is one of the oldest standing frame homes in the
state of Missouri.

This second close up of the map shows it just as Billon had described it, just
below Pattison and just east of Mackland.

Map taken from Dry, plate 98

Some comments on the photo above:

If there is any doubt about this being the Gratiot house, just go back above and compare
with the photos of the 1790 and 1810 drawings. No doubt about it.

Just slightly to the left (would have been UP the hill to the south) and a bit west of
the Gratiot house is the Pattison Ave. Black Baptist Church. This area had a significant
black, former slave, population at this time -- 1875, not at Gratiot's time. I plan to
write about that neighborhood later on.

The large factory down in the valley is the St. Louis Schmelting factory. It handled
huge quantities of both gold and silver sent in by train from mines in the west, particularly
Colorado. It was smelted here into finished gold and silver bars and other modes of preparation.
It is said that both gold and silver was sort of laying around in the yards of the schmelting
factory without problem.

The building on the north side of Manchester, just by the "hester" of Manchester, is
Mitchell Clay Manufacturing Company, a factory for making fire bricks.

In the far upper left corner is a large building with a smaller one tacked on. That
was the Sulphur Springs Hotel, formerly for the resort which was gone by 1875. Directly
across Manchester from it is the corner of Manchester and Sulphur where Nick's Pub is
today. It was Gittins' hotel and saloon.

Just between the spot where two trains about about to come together is Howard Station,
the Cheltenham stop on the Missouri Pacific line.

THE RIVER DES PERES VALLEY -- A PARADISE IN ITS GOOD TIMES

The central piece of Gratiot's land and where he built his home, was on the shelf of a slight hill overlooking the beautiful River des Peres. Father P.J. O'Connor, quoting a bulletin from the Missouri Botanical Garden, describes the marvel that this land held before mining and brick making changed it all.

Father O'Connor says: "In the old Gratiot League Square there was a region almost up to 1860 idyllic in its native aspect.** This was the little valley of the River des Peres stretching between the present Forest Park southwestwardly to Knox Avenue. Its slopes had originally been covered with the tree growth common to Missouri stream courses. A group of lordly oaks shaded seigniorialy a clump of papaws. Here and there leaned over the des Peres the dapple-bark of sycamore. Again, and solitary, stood a gigantic cottonwood. There were thickets of hazel, stretches of wild apple, and on the uplands one struggled through the briars of wild blackberry. (Bulletin -- Shaw's Garden)" (O'Connor, p. 8.)

** [Corbett notes: With all due respect to Father O'Connor and the author of the
Shaw's Garden Bulletin, 1860 is a bit generous. Two serious brick factories were
operating by 1855 and it was just a few months of that and the River des Peres was not only no longer a paradise, it was a large sewer.]

Charles Gratiot was charged with developing the land he was given. He did have his farm and cultivated it, built a small mill and distillery. He sold some plots of land (and purchased others outside his "league square.")

Photo taken from Stevens, 1909

Charles Gratiot in his fully established senior years

After the American purchase he became a judge and very prominent figure in St. Louis business and politics. Charles died in 1817 at the age of 65, the land was divided into 12 east-west narrow strips. Each strip was only about 1,000 feet wide, but three miles long. In some of the strips land had already been sold to other people.

GRATION CHILDREN INHERIT MUCH OF THE DOGTOWN AREA

There were just three of the strips of the "old" square which impact the neighborhood of Dogtown. These were inherited by: (City Hall document, 1819)

Henry Gratiot's inheritance of GRATIOT LEAGUE SQUARE.

1927.2ft. wide n/s, the full 3 miles e/w strip on a line with Valley Rd. (Dale) on the north and Glades and Phare (Shaw) on the south.

PAUL Benjamin Gratiot's inheritance of GRATIOT LEAGUE SQUARE.

1131.9ft. wide n/s, the full 3 miles e/w strip on a line with Wise on the north, and Valley Rd (Dale) on the south.

1131.9ft. wide n/s, the full 3 miles e/w strip on a line the south edge of Forest Park Oakland) on the north, and Wise on the south.

(Louis Schmidt's notations from City Hall documents.)

The map below is marked into three strips to roughly separate the space of Gratiot inheritance:

Map is taken from 1878 Pitzman map of St. Louis

Henry had the real plum. He got the beautiful River des Peres section and his father's house. Some of the sources say he built a house, but the descriptions that have survived indicate that Charles' 1790 house, remodeled some in 1810,
is also Henry's house. According to Billon's account it would have been the
young Henry who remodeled the family country home in 1810, not his father.
This would make sense. His father was approaching 60, busy with politics and business in the city and the trip to the country would not have been a convenient one for him. Yet having Henry live there and oversee the cultivation and develop of the land would continue to meet the obligation of the grant.Billon tells us that Henry "…when a young man built a house and improved a farm on his father's league square on the King's Highway, five miles from the Town, where be lived for some years, previous to and after his marriage. " (Billon, p. 173.)After his marriage in 1813 he lived on the farm and some of his children were born there. However, "… [i]n 1825, with his brother John P. B. Gratiot, he went with the rush to the "Fevre River" lead mines at Galena, Ill. and established themselves at the place named after them "Gratiot's Grove" (Billion, p. 173.)

Henry Gratiot -- Lived in this area 1810 - 1831

Henry never returned to St. Louis to live and shortly after sold the land to Bill Sublette, but more about this later.

Paul Benjamin Gratiot became a genuine resident farmer of the area and his family remained into the fourth generation. He went off with his two brothers to Gratiot's Grove, but tired of that life. He returned to St. Louis in 1832 and with his wife and children moved onto his property. He built a farm house, which was built onto and around, being often reshaped in the process. The eventual home was at 6135 Victoria. The home used both local timber and bricks made on the premises by slaves of the Gratiot family. Paul Benjamin died in 1855. However, the large family home accommodated quite a few people and in the 1900 census there are no fewer than 4 of his own children living there. They were, of course fairly elderly. Adolph who was married and had a family of his own seems to have been regarded as the head of the family. His unmarried siblings, Benjamin, Henry and Theresa also lived there. Adolph's children took over the house and lived there into the next generation. The fourth and final generation of Gratiot descendants continued in the home until it was finally demolished in 1959 after 127 years of service. (Barns, 1989).Another of Adolph's brothers, Paul Benjamin's son, Charles, was a physician and lived at the corner of West Park and Hampton.

CONCLUSION

The Gratiot family's contribution is primarily Charles' role of opening the area to settlement. After his death in 1817 only Henry (briefly) and the Paul Benjamin family every lived in the area.

Henry sold his plum of a plot in 1831 and the next owners introduced massive changes, exploiting the rich fire clay of the region, and in the process created the economy which allowed most of our 19th century Dogtown residents to be able to come here. But that's a later story to be told.

Paul Benjamin Gratiot's family were not very active in the neighborhood. They lived on the land, farming in the earliest years and as residents at 6125 Victoria in later generations. The land was gradually sold off into small lots which became the very heart of residential Dogtown: